FEATURE:
Modern-Day Queens
Lola Young
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THIS edition…
of Modern-Day Queens is about one our very best Pop artists. Lola Young released her third studio album, I'm Only F**king Myself, last year. The south London artist won a GRAMMY for Best Pop Solo Performance for Messy. That standout song has not surpassed a billion streams. Young also won the Breakthrough Artist award at this year’s BRITs. I am going to come to some interviews with an artist who is going to be a legend of the future. In terms of what she has achieved and where she is headed, there are few artists like her. The music resonating with such a wide audience. An authentic and true artist, Lola Young spoke with ELLE about I’m Only F**king Myself. One of the most downloaded artists on the planet, Young spoke about there being no façade or alter ego with her and the music:
“Young was raised on rhythm: she grew up in Beckenham, south London, with her mother and stepfather, a professional bass player. By the time she graduated from the Brit school, she’d already caught the eye of her now-managers Nick Shymansky and Nick Huggett – the men behind Amy Winehouse and Adele, respectively – at local gigs and open-mic events, and signed to Island Records. By 23, she’d released 27 singles, two albums and two EPs.
‘I didn’t grow up with loads of money,’ she says. ‘My mum and stepdad are proud, and I support them where I can. I’m from a musical household and started piano early. A lot has changed, but so much has stayed the same. I have the same friends, the same family, the same sisters stealing my clothes. That grounds me.
‘I never want to let the glitz and glamour take my head to a different place. You can get swept away quickly – it’s terrifying. When you’re living a more luxurious life – being brought out to a fancy boat by a brand or something – you realise how many different pockets of the world exist and it’s easy to lose yourself. People treat you differently. They know who you are before you walk in. I’ve never spoken about this before, but it’s something I’m still grappling with. It’s strange. You have to know who you can turn to – who’ll tell you when you’re being a shit.’
Young’s meteoric ascent has earnt her an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, the Rising Star award at this year’s Ivor Novellos and a feature with Tyler, The Creator on ‘Like Him’. It’s the kind of career trajectory most artists take a decade to build. But the real standout moment came in June, when Billie Eilish personally asked Young to open for her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour.
‘She wanted me to join her on the whole tour, but I couldn’t because of other shows we had booked,’ she says. (In the end, Young played two nights in Paris.) ‘[Billie] is so genuine, and she was very complimentary about my work. I look up to her so much – we’re a similar age – watching what she stood for, how she came through. Just seeing her was enough to feel really empowered and remember why I do this. We had a little chat after but I was completely starstruck.’
I’m Only F**king Myself isn’t just an album. It’s a memoir – a scorched-earth account of sex, sabotage and survival, written with Young’s longtime collaborators Manuka and Solomonophonic, known for their work with Doja Cat and SZA. She wrote most of it in Paris over six months – a creatively rich, quietly intense period as ‘Messy’ took on a life of its own. ‘All the songs connect to me in some way,’ she says of the 14-track record”.
I am moving to an interview from earlier this year. Speaking with Rolling Stone UK in Los Angeles, after award wins and this new wave of attention and success, it has been seen as a comeback. It is not the case at all. Lola Young has always been active and relevant. However, there was a period of recovery needed after she collapsed on stage in 2025. With a lot more to give, this is a new chapter for her:
“It was a whirlwind of a year,” Young says of her 2025. “It was so mad and beautiful and exciting, but it was also, at times, very sad.” Yet the music industry can move at an unyielding clip, particularly when artists are rocketing to stardom like Young was.
Young was in demand, shuttling from one corner of the world to another, with massive performances, including Glastonbury and Lollapalooza Paris, loading up a packed schedule. Her days started moving at warp speed, the hours hectic and endless and exhausting. All the while, she had gotten help for an active addiction to cocaine and worked with a sober coach who traveled with her for a lot of 2025. But as the year progressed, things got heavier and harder.
“If I’m gonna be honest with you, the enjoyment was deteriorating,” she says. “Just small things that I had to do: an interview, a piece of promo. I just didn’t know all the stuff that comes with it. But I wasn’t in a good place, and there’s two sides of the coin …” she trails off. “You want to say yes to everything because everything’s on the table, but then you also have to balance that with your mental health, and I’ve been super open about my mental-health condition that I suffer from, and also about all the other stuff that’s going on for me.”
That summer, Young’s manager, Nick Shymansky, told The New York Times that Young had relapsed and gone back to treatment. She returned to public life a few months later, releasing her third album, I’m Only F**king Myself, on September 19. The LP, razored, chaotic and edgier than her past releases, chronicled her experiences with love, isolation, and recovery, set to upbeat sounds. Once the record came out, it was back to promo; she did Fallon and a YouTube interview and a performance for the Grammy Museum Foundation. On the outside, it seemed she was in a good place, but behind the scenes, she’d been barreling toward crisis.
People saw the breaking point in unforgiving real time. On Sept. 27, Young was onstage in New York, at the All Things Go festival. Young prefers not to talk about the specifics of that day, but audience video showed what happened: She was in the middle of singing her song ‘Conceited’ when she turned to the side, as though she wanted to say something to someone standing there. She stumbled briefly, and then seconds later, her eyes closed and she went completely rigid, falling backward. Almost immediately, the digital age’s most pernicious habits took over: The clip ricocheted across the internet, propagating over and over across every social media platform, a person’s worst moment on constant repeat. Hundreds of videos followed, with fans worrying about Young’s health, speculating about the pressure she was under. The crueler ones accused her of faking the whole thing and staging the incident for attention.
There was noise and concern and uproar in the months that followed, but none of it reached Young. A week after she collapsed, she posted a message on Instagram: “I’m going away for a while. It pains me to say I have to cancel everything for the foreseeable future. Thank you for all the love and support.” She checked into a facility and went on lockdown for two months. She had no phone or access to the outside world. She was in there while people speculated about her incessantly. She was in there when news of her two Grammy nominations arrived: Best New Artist, and Best Pop Solo Performance, for ‘Messy’.
PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle for Rolling Stone
A ton of artists supported her: Katy Perry sent her a message; Charli XCX wrote her an email. Kesha and Elton John both reached out. Lady Gaga texted. “That was pretty mad,” Young says. “And that made me feel safer.” She credits her fans and how incredibly supportive they were throughout the past several months.
Still, coming out of that has been a careful process, with her health at the center of it all. Young says that, unlike previous recovery attempts, the approach is different this time: The facility she visited is holistic, centering on therapy and psychology instead of solely treating addiction. Since leaving, she’s been attending AA meetings and has a sponsor.
Young says her relationship to work has also changed. “One thing that’s really helped me is slowing down, mentally, taking time to process,” she says. “Days off, that’s really important. Enjoying time with friends, people that love you.” But, she’s had to navigate both tough moments and criticism, especially after canceling shows and appearances. “There was a bunch of hate, but you know what? Fuck it,” she says. “When you’re doing something, there’s always going to be a couple motherfuckers talking shit. But at the same time, it was a decision, like I said, that I had to make, and it was sad that I had to do that. What else was I going to do, die? That was the reality of where my addiction was heading.”
There’s no manual for pop stars dealing with addiction, but Young and her team have found that having her take her time and listen to herself helps most. “We’ve learned that things need to slow down, and that’s really healthy to know that,” she says. “But, no, I don’t think it’s fair that people push blame on anybody when they don’t know the full story.”
Still, she gives fans who worry about her some benefit of the doubt. “I don’t really blame [those] people either, you know, because they’re protecting me and they care,” she says, adding, “I think it’s sweet that people wanna, you know … but people on the internet, honestly, [they’re] insane, some of them. They’re just pulling something out of nothing and running with it a million miles per hour.”
Focusing on Young’s addiction feels reductive, especially when her catalog is filled with humor and intellect and skill. She bristles at the idea of becoming a spokesperson for sobriety when her own journey hasn’t been easy or linear. And yet so much of her strength as an artist involves being truthful about what’s happening inside her. “I’m just writing what I’m feeling, and then I’ll realise later, ‘Oh, fuck. I shouldn’t have said that I’m a raging drug addict.’ Then I’m like, ‘You know what? I am. What the fuck am I trying to hide?’”
It’s that unwavering honesty and vulnerability that’s traveled so far —worldwide, in fact — reaching people who need to hear her music the most. Anecdotally, she’s heard how her songs have cheered people up, guided them through breakups, reminded them that they’re enough. A fan recently wrote that he was so deeply moved by her music, he taught himself English to understand her better.
And then there are those who’ve told Young that her music saved their lives. “I want to just help in any way that I possibly can,” she says”.
I am going to end with a live review from The Times. They saw her perform at the London Palladium earlier this month. It is clear that Lola Young will have a busy summer with performances. Although she only released an album, I think that Lola Young will be working on new material and has other ideas. It is exciting to see her in a better place and inspiring so many people. This strong and resilient artist that has many years ahead:
“Since then she has won awards at both the Grammys and the Brits while building a reputation as someone who is prepared to lay out every issue, from addictions to bad boyfriends to serious mental health problems, in pop songs that have their appeal in being so unguarded. The challenge was in Young balancing her clear talent and charisma with the pressures of exposure, but this concert proved to be a well-judged coming in from the cold.
“It’s a bad game of love we’re in,” sang Young, playing solo piano, on Bad Game (3am), mining the lonely spirit of Joni Mitchell while throwing in some Mariah Carey-style vocal gymnastics for good measure. From there, she came across as being in control of the situation: here was someone who can open up and bleed in song, but align that with a professionalism that brings its own form of protection.
“So I’m back,” she said, as a pianist joined her for Why Do I Feel Better When I Hurt You, which displayed her lyrical speciality: going deep into relationship problems without supplying any answers, probably because, being only 25, she hasn’t got them yet. “Life’s a game and I just can’t win,” she lamented on Penny out of Nothing; Sad Sob Story was one big gripe about an old boyfriend. The zest with which the female-dominated audience sang the words back to her illustrated how closely they related to them.
Young was also entirely capable of maximum rudeness. One Thing was a catchy pop singalong about having zero interest in some guy’s mind but a lot of interest in his body; Post Sex Clarity evoked the feeling of pure attraction in the face of reason. Drugs featured too, with D£aler equating addiction to substance abuse and marrying the two. Dancing before the crowd, making the fans sing the choruses, she seemed almost carefree. But the songs themselves revealed the troubled waters within.
“I guess you know what’s coming,” she said in the encore. “This song changed my life.” That led the way for Messy, in which she listed all the criticisms levelled at her: smoking like a chimney, not being skinny, pulling “a Britney every other week” (ie, having a meltdown). The messiness is what makes Lola Young stand out, of course. If she can continue to hold it together, as she did at this appealingly compact concert, and transplant the chaos into song rather than let it take over her life, she’ll be fine”.
An artist we should be very proud of, I wonder what the next year or two holds. More albums and awards, for sure. There is so much affection and respect for Lola Young around the music world and far beyond. If you are new to Lola Young, then do go and listen to her music. One of the strongest artists in the world. As a songwriter and performer, there are few others…
IN her league.